According to DC rainmaker the touchscreen works significantly better on the 840 than on previous iterations where it was troublesome with gloves, raindrops etc.
However, there is a big price difference between the 840 and the 530 e.g. I bought one of those for £160 on Amazon just over a year ago.
The 530 works fine for navigating a route loaded onto it as a course, where it provides you with a map centered on your current location and upcoming turn prompts. I don’t think it’d work well for on the fly map navigating – I’d rather use something like a quadlock to mount a mobile phone onto my bars if I were doing that.

I’ve got three sets of R8000 cranks, codes PE, UE, and QA.
Seems like the ‘UE’ ones are not considered an affected model – which makes sense as I believe those were manufactured after 2019.
I haven’t had any debonding issues with mine – mine are relatively low mileage as my commuting/training bike usually has 105 cranks installed.
I know a bunch of people who debonded their cranks though, mostly DA ones and higher mileage. Some managed to get a warranty replacement, others were out of warranty.
Will be interesting to see whether the inspection and replace procedure gets rolled out beyond USA.

Brand-X RD-01 – I’d emigrated, I had brought a box of spare bike bits but no road bike to ride to work on so I bought this cheap frameset and a few bits so I could build up a complete commuter bike. The BB was creaky until I refaced the shell but other than that I have been very impressed – it is even nice and stiff when sprinting. I’ve since swapped out the Brand-X fork for an Easton CX fork and done some cyclocross races on it which is a bit of a compromise with the rear tyre clearance but just about works.

Cervelo P3 (2016) – I needed a bike for upcoming TT races that needed to be UCI compliant, and I found this one being sold second hand for a decent price with Zipp 404 wheelset. I ended up switching to an e-tap groupset for better fit withing the UCI rules – the mechanical levers made it hard to get the cockpit long enough.

Felt AR5 (2012)- I needed a UCI compliant bike for road racing and I found this one being sold super cheap 2nd hand and it had some decent Bont Aeolous 5 wheels and I have found it useful to have some aero wheels with an aluminium brake track. After buying the bike I found the chainstay was damaged from a previous chainsuck incident – but with the advice of some composite expert friends I did my own repair job on this. It has a super short wheelbase – the twichyness and toe overlap is a bit annoying actually but overall it has served me well.

Trek Procaliber (2017) – I needed a bike for MTB races and I found this one being sold cheap 2nd hand, it came with some nice bits, and other than one of the XTR pedal axles snapping has been perfect.

So, to update this saga. Daughter had an electrician in and he basically confirmed what you suggested- as soon as the hot water heater is turned on the usage shoots through the roof. His diagnosis was that it’s because the boiler is old and obsolete and the only solution is to replace it. Not a surprise but not what we wanted to hear.

Taking a step back here.
An all electric property is always going to have higher energy bills than a similar property with gas heating – electricity is about three times more expensive per KWh than gas. Hence this is something to factor in when weighing up places to rent/buy along with the other ownership/rental costs.

The boiler is a large high power device, you can think of it a bit like a supersized kettle, the power draw will be high while it is on. The relevant question here is how long is it on for per day, and why?

Next question- what should she replace it with? What types of boiler exist and what should she go for if the priorities are low electricity usage and reliability?

Generally it is wise to treat self-serving advice with some skepticism – the electrician would benefit from being paid for installing a new boiler.

A new gas boiler might be 10-15% more efficient than an older one due to the introduction of energy-saving features (condensing, etc) that reduce how much heat is lost in the exhaust gases. However, this is not the case for an electric boiler, as these just dump heat directly into the water, so you’re unlikely to get significant energy efficiencies from a new electric boiler.
Tweaking habits is more likely to sace money than a new boiler e.g.:
– For central heating (e.g. in winter) use the clock to turn on the heating only when the place is occupied rather than heating when nobody is home.
– Heat water on-demand rather than storing hot water which will leak out heat over time (an exception to this would be if there is an variable tariff).
– Change showering habits – less time, lower water flow, shorter, etc.
– Limit use of hot water for washing up e.g. use a bowl rather than free flowing water. Nowadays I mostly use cold water and only use hot for stubborn stuff.

I looked at these. On one hand they seem rather expensive, but on the other hand being able to reply “I am of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious bike maintenance” when using it and being approached by wife/kids is appealing.

Silly me I forgot aerobar clipons in that list

Hmmm, seems a bit serious for commuting? How are you suggesting it would be used?

I tried to cover that in my first post. Basically training to power makes it much easier to do quality structured training rather than just smashing yourself every day. And you can track your progress using the data as well

E.g. tuesday 4x3min interval HIITs each way
Wednesday keep in Z1-Z2 for active recovery
Thursday 2×5 min interval HIITs each way
Friday keep in z1-z2 for active recovery

An analogy here is people in a large building complaining that the lifts are too slow.
You could spend a lot of money making the lifts 10% faster but people will keep complaining because it doesn’t change the user experience that much.
But if instead of doing that if you put mirrors on the doors, or screens showing news updates above the doors then all the complaints stop.

To directly answer the brief of spending your way faster the answer in approx order of significance is something like:
– 25c GP5000
– full frame bag (in place of rucksack)
– aero skinsuit
– aero helmet
– veet
– aero shoe/calf guards

All of that might save you a couple.of minutes a day. Basically if is physically or socially uncomfortable then you’re probably on the right track.

I haven’t taken the time to fully visualise what you’re doing but it seems like you’re aiming for a list of client with a few conditional attribute columns and thise conditions should be straightforward to determine with standard excel functions like sumifs, countifs, counta, vlookup, index, match, etc

You don’t really get fitter by just smashing commutes, that’s a way to get you wrecked and also stuck in a rut of just riding 20km at a time.

You’ll reach the end of the week knackered from 240km and not want to do anything at the weekend. Using an e-bike, at least for some of the commutes, will keep you riding more.

My personal experience was I got significantly fitter from doing 30km commutes (60km a day, although usually only 4 times a week), and still do a fast paced 120-180km club ride at the weekend, sometimes several club rides a week actually, 500-600km total per week sometimes.
However to do this it was critical follow a structure and alternate between training stress and active recovery days.
If your goal.is to get fitter I reiterate – you want a power meter.

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/what-to-pack-pocketses-road-tools-spares/

I have to admit that I only discovered that the true way to eat a pork pie was with a chutney such as Branston Pickle when I was today years old when.

I suggest the best solution to your issue is buy power meter pedals, fit them to your bike and then build a structured training plan into your commute e.g. HIITs on Mon, Wed, Fri and zone 2 active recovery on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

It won’t make commuting any easier on day 1, but you won’t notice it because now the efforts will be contributing to a bigger goal. Over time, you’ll most likely get a lot fitter and faster.

But in terms of the priority of things you can spend your money on to make yourself faster, a more aero frameset is pretty far down the list.

I think there are plenty of sports where an “open field” would work fine, and i think in ALL sports it could/should be the default, up until the point where it natually eliminates itself (ie, its an open category but in the end it just turns out that everyone at the top level of the sport is actually male (or female)

I want to appreciate the thinking behind it only being an issue if there isn’t female representation at the top level of the sport, can you explain it?

At the various tiers of amateur sports below the top level, it is important to keep building female participation who’re still vastly under-represented. For example, providing a podium for females to appreciate and celebrate their attendance is training they put in preparation is one of the positive things we can do to help here. Do you not think that losing those podium opportunities is going to have any detrimental effect on the experience of female participants, and the future of female participation in sports?

Even for mass start sports like cycling sportives/long-distance road running there are lots of people who use the gender/age cat finishing position to give themselves a pat on the back for the training/effort they put in, or motivate their training for the next event.

It seems to me that a lot of this is arse about front.

It’s a non-issue until it becomes one, deal with it upstream if needs be.

Better to trim wings after the fact than remove them beforehand.

That’s the approach they took for the financial sector leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, isn’t it? Has this approach ever worked well?

To me, it seems bonkers to be purely reactive rather than proactive in regulating competition, although perhaps my thinking may be shaped by working with the regulation of safety-critical systems.

For me the annoying thing is the large ad videos that pop up inline with the forum posts.
I rarely read any of the members only content so it makes me really question what I am paying the membership fee for when I am having to navigate over ads.

What if this and the calculator thread were to merge?

A who’s calculator can integrate integrate e^(x^pi) lim 0>pi the fastest throwdown might draw the calculator overclockers out of the woodwork (it is an actual thing).

What do you do with your mini PC that is processor intensive enough that over clocking might actually make a difference? I do have that right, over clocking is fairly pointless if all you’re doing is browsing the STW Forum.

Talking generally, there are still quite a few CPU intensive things that can keep users waiting e.g. image cataloguing/editing if you’re a photographer, even onedrive syncing hammers the CPU.

Nowadays overclocking PCs you need to pay more attention to the particular platform you’re using and what you can/can’t do with it and what methods help deliver the best improvements. e.g. on Intel platform the ‘K’ chips tend to be the easiest to overclock whereas the others tend to have the multiplier between CPU and memory bus clocks locked.

Depending on what you’re doing you may find that overclocking the CPU doesn’t deliver much benefit and it is tweaking the GPU and RAM timings that is actually effective in improving performance.

I know “back in the day” there was a lot of different bios tweaks

No there weren’t. back in the daythere were dip switches on your MB you could “juggle”

No there weren’t, back in the day there were frequency crystals you needed to replace.

*her* article surely!

Considering it is mostly men commenting here, would, anybody actually have any issue with the male category being renamed as an open category?

UK triathlon did this last year. I am surprised that more sporting bodies did not do this when they clarified or changed their rules for trans athletes.

Whilst not a perfect solution for everybody (perhaps no solution ever will be) it seems like a small step forward that doesn’t negatively impact anybody else.

That is the first time I’ve seen an acorn system 1, it looks like a tough nut to program with that onboard keyboard.

Is it something to do with polish? Edit: too late

I solved the anagram in 0.68 seconds but it took me practically an eternity to associate the similie :)

If this forum had a sprinkling of swear words then wouldn’t that eventually trigger corporate profanity filters to blacklist the domain? That might affect some members’ habits.

You probably don’t need to do much more than you’re already doing.

The setup prep can be just as important as the physiological adaptation. Bike fit, saddle, cycling shorts, nutrition etc. It may sound basic but you might find that a saddle or shorts that you thought fit you perfectly when you use them once a week start to become hell on the 4th subsequent long day of riding.
For physiological adaptation, mostly just increasing the volume of your riding will help, doing back to back rides on Saturday and Sunday would be ideal.
Doing a couple of higher intensity sessions during the weekdays e.g. HIITs would also or alternatively help by improving your threshold fitness.

The dinner table analogy is a good one but it is incomplete.
It isn’t just the bike designer one needs to be comfortable telling to their face but all the stakeholders affected by the article e.g. the people who decide to or not to buy the bike.

Or for this thread it isn’t just trans-people to bear in mind but all women who’re involved with sports.

Designing the ideal solution for a particular group of people is relatively easy. However it is relatively complex to come up with the ideal solution that accounts for the level of consequence to several different groups with different and conflicting needs, whilst also factoring for the different quantities of people in those groups.

Am I going to be the first to claim the geek kudos of loving an RPN calulator?

You certainly claim that crown, although the previously mentioned swissmicros are inspired by the HPs and also use RPN logic. I’ve never used RPN and not sure how long it’d take me to get used to it.

I also use the calculator on my phone but it is just nice to use a calculator with mechanical buttons when at my desk.
I’ve also found the implementation of things like precision to be very variable on the phone calculators e.g. the samsung app applies a lot of rounding whereas the google one has much better internal precision.

FX-39 baby

I happen to have a fx-19 which is just a couple of years older and is very similar, It probably has the same vacuum tube display which I like using especially the clicking sound it makes when first turned on.
Thr fx-19 was the first calculator with a fraction button but it doesn’t have bracket buttons like the fx-39.

It is strange how most people’s thoughts on helmets and cycling have been trained over time.

MOlgrips – the point being rates of head injury when driving or walking are similar to cycling. so why cycling helmets and not driving or walking ones?

Yes this exactly. If one suggests that people wear protective helmets inside cars (outside of motorsport) then most people think you’ve lost your marbles, yet far more motor vehicle occupants receive serious head injuries each year than cyclists do.

I also like what the hierarchy of controls diagrams JonBa shared highlights, I introduced that exact same diagram a few years ago when discussing this topic elsewhere.

Not only can mandatory helmet-wearing laws cause safety issues through reduced cycling but they foster an environment that exacerbates behaviours in motor vehicle drivers which is dangerous for cyclists.

I don’t think you really need 3mm of the steerer above the stem.
IMHO this came about from the 5mm spacer being common and cutting the steerer 2mm short of that to ensure there is clearance between the top cap and steerer to ensure preload.

Personally, I use a 2mm spacer with about 1mm of the steerer above the stem and a top cap with a profile that doesn’t foul on the steerer tube.

The stems with an integrated top cap are designed to sit without a spacer on top so that is obviously fine with the big IF that the designers have done their job right.

The issue with traditional stems tends not to be the clamp at the back but their small area mating onto the front of the steerer tube due to the cutout where the stem section is. If the steerer is sitting below the top of the stem then much of the mating area towards the top of this interface is gone which greatly increases the risk of the stem camming or causing impact damage in use or during a minor crash etc.

People riding their expensive bikes with an unlubricated squeaking chain.
It isn’t my problem that they’re torturing their drivetrain components to a premature death, yet it still makes me angry as to why they’d do such a thing.

Whilst I thought the article made several good points and gave me some food for thought, this I thought is a bad point:

abandoning the male/female divide might well do much to stop ‘women’s sports’ being the second tier event it’s all too often relegated to being.

I don’t see how abandoning the male/female divide and making it virtually impossible for women to qualify for international competition (e.g. athletics) and canceling women’s sports platforms such as the FIFA Women’s Football World Cup, ITF Women’s World Tennis Tour, Women’s WorldTour would help elevate women’s sports. Rather it’d take things backwards a long way back to the time when it was almost impossible for women to follow a professional career in sports. I appreciate that the health of a sport needs to consider the whole pyramid from the grassroots up, however, the exposure from televised sports and professionals at the top tier of the pyramid has an extremely important influence on everything below.

Similarly, at the grassroots removing the male/female division would clearly be detrimental to women in many ways to a lesser or greater degree depending on the sport. Take rugby for example – I don’t think it’d be going out on a limb to say that female participation would significantly decrease if there was no male/female divide.

In general, I see the regulation of Trans-Athletes competing in women’s categories as a highly complex ‘needs of the many vs. needs of the few’ challenge. Whilst trans athletes deserve to participate in sports without discrimination, the relatively numerous cis-women also deserve fair competition and career opportunities in sport and there is obviously no simple answer to balancing these conflicting needs.

My one is a bit like this, a Yihua-a-like. It is probably old hat to have the air heater on the station rather then the wand though.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/314068770007?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=dJFlJuyYSLC&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=tVZPX4WFTYW&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Sounds like a bent sprocket but worth double checking before you start counterbending it because a bent freewheel or axle can also cause a cassette wobble.

Appreciate the annoyance and inconvienience the enforcment is creating. However, businesses inappropriately dumping their waste is a significant cost and inconvenience to Councils and Residents so I do understand why Councils need to do some enforcement.

You’ve seen the test results for C3 yeah…
https://zerofrictioncycling.com.au/lubetesting/

If you have any belief in his testing an expensive bottle of lube used on a clean chain and kept on top of saves you an awful lot of money in the long term and is faster.

I have belief in his testing, and will not be replacing the C3 after the bottle has run out – still, I don’t think it is horrendous for my particular use-case for the MTB which is mostly 45 minute races without even bothering for a warmup lap :)
What I said I think still stands though, C3 dry might not be a good chain lube – but at least it is chain lube unlike WD40/GT85.

I’ve given up with various lubes. Off the back of the MX/Enduro bike approach I spray the chain with WD40/GT85 and rub with a rag.

My MTB gets a hosing off after each ride and then muc-off C3 dry applied to the chain and it always stays lovely and clean.
Surely this is a better compromise than resorting to using non-lubes on the chain – every wear/friction test result I have seen for WD40/GT85 has been horrible.

Related question…what are people using to clean and degrease the chain before lubing up?

Heavy duty water based degreaser and a park cyclone chain scrubber. I find the scrubber is very effective at brushing off all the crap.
Plus it is a lot less hassle than taking off the chain or storing and disposing of solvents like white spirits.

What do think cools the air without air con?

Entropy

Fans move air, they don’t magically cool air.

Daffy – The forums and comments sections are full of engineers in unrelated fields saying that steel bikes can’t possibly feel different to other materials “because science”. Yet subjective reports from people who have actually ridden them say otherwise.

How do you reconcile that? Are we all gullible fools? Or could you perhaps not have the grasp of the subject you think you do?

This comes back to my earlier comment in this thread – people who are not basing their argument on formal expressions are not being scientific. Meaning statements expressed with formally defined vocabulary, syntax, and semantics that relate to explicit, quantified, and measurable criterion. Just because somebody claims to be an engineer doesn’t make their argument scientific.

Reports from people based on their practical riding experience are not necessarily subjective – they can be objective.

I’d suggest that when considering different frame materials their characteristics at dissipating/damping high frequency is significant. Vibrations up to about 20Hz are transmitted strongly into the body (resonance frequencies of the body are typically between 9 and 16 Hz), we know that shocks on bikes don’t respond fast enough to eliminate higher frequencies e.g. above 5Hz, however, other parts of the bike including the frame can react and help dampen frequencies about 5Hz.

I have a pair of super rigid cro-mo handlebars from an 80’s MTB. Riding with that I can really feel the vibrations travel up my arms, my upper body feels fatigued after the ride and my wrists are still aching the next day. If I repeat the same ride on the same bike but with alu or carbon handlebars then objectively, my upper body does not feel fatigued and my wrists do not ache.

If you parked within 15m of a sign saying one thing, and there wasn’t another sign clearly delineating the transition to a different set of restrictions then I’d say that arbitration should rule in your favor. Based on the traffic signs manual what you’d expect based on where restrictions change is a multi-panel sign with arrows like Figures 6-X here

The irony is that if this was under council enforcement then you’d have a much clearer and more impartial appeal and arbitration – but because this is private enforcement it is unfortunately stacked more against you.

Is any full-sus real? Once I bought a 120mm full-sus bike (pivot switchblade) and I just felt overbiked and took the fun out of riding so I went back to a hard-tail for a more ‘real’ MTB experience.
Admittedly it may be because I don’t ride on real trails so need a more real bike to create a real riding experience.
The challenge here I guess is to come up with a formal expression that equates the real and imaginary parts of bicycle and trail attributes? This would allow one to equate whether a particular combination meets a given threshold of realness.

So if it’s a gap to attach things (lights) to, why does it need the Selle Royal bit to plug in there? When would I ever need to put that back in?

It doesn’t and you don’t. It is just branding plus an intuitive illustration to the end user that there is a clip thingie you could use.

28 spokes is 12.5% fewer than 32. Where does 26% come from? 1.6 gives 21% less cross section than 1.8, and 1.65 gives 16% less. Regardless, your point stands

Yes I wrote it the wrong way round to how I calculated it going from 28 to 32 spokes is increasing by 14%.